Annotations and song pages can by stylized with markdown and HTML formatting. This page is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all formatting techniques, but it does contain the most important ones. We try to keep all of the formatting on the site as uniform as possible, so if it’s not on the list, don’t use it in an annotation.

Formatting Annotations

Annotations should always be formatted with markdown. Annotations can become difficult to edit if they're stylized with HTML instead of markdown. The annotations below contain the most important formatting techniques and examples of how to properly use them:

• Italics
• Bold
• Block quotes and quotation marks
• Links
• Images
• Image captions
• Videos
• Dashes
• Escape markdown characters: * # / ( ) [ ] < >

If you’re looking for general information about how to annotate take a look at our guide, “How to Annotate and Edit on Genius”

Formatting Lyrics

Song pages don’t require too much HTML knowledge, but there are a few instances where you’ll need to add a little formatting:

• Italics and bold
• Centering
• Force titles/artists to start with a lowercase letter
• Extending/Moving Annotations

For an in-depth look at transcribing take a look at our guide, “How to Add Songs to Genius”

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Formatting In The Forums

Lyrics, texts and annotations can make use of some basic HTML tags for additional formatting, listed below.

• Text Headers
• Italics and Bold
• Numbered Lists
• Bullet lists
• Horizontal Line
• Crossed Out Text
• Subscripts and superscripts
• Code block
• Plain text